


i hope your dreams are amazing

by okayantigone



Series: the boy who cried raven [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Dream Pack (Raven Cycle), Drug Use, Fourth of July, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Joseph Kavinsky's Death, Joseph Kavinsky-centric, Juvie, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, pre-The foxhole court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: it's during andrew's first year at psu that he gets the call."a mrs. kavinska called," wymack says heavily. "she wants to know if you can make it to her son's funeral on wednesday and say a few words."receiving the news that his former roommate at juvie up and killed himself is somehow not the worst thing that happens during his college career, but it does happen.or the one where andrew and k knew each other.
Relationships: Joseph Kavinsky/Andrew Minyard
Series: the boy who cried raven [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663510
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	i hope your dreams are amazing

**Author's Note:**

> this follows from my other andrew/kavinsky story about them meetingin juvie.   
i'm fucking with the timeline a little, and going off the assumption that andrew's only a year or so older than kavinsky (according to trc wiki kavinsky is 17-18 when he dies, and andrew is 19 in tfc, which would make him 18 his first year of college). 
> 
> title taken form mallrat's song charlie, which i listened to on repeat while writing

andrew is sitting in the bleachers, watching kevin’s painful attempts at wielding his stick on the court.

his phone vibrates in his pockets, and he hopes it’s a message from his one true love, dominoes, to let him know about offers. it’s better than the alternative, which would be nicky bothering him with his inane chatter. why his cousin feels weirdly compelled to narrate his internal monologue in andrew’s text message inbox will forever be beyond him.

but the message blinking from his screen is from an unknown number, and he opens it with a stir of mild curiousity that tugs through the haze of forced cheer thrumming beneath his skin.

_are you coming to fourth?_

andrew feels the smile slashing across his face, before he can stop it. he wants to claw it off. he remembers the feel of kavinsky’s jutting hips beneath his palms. his pliant soft mouth.

there was nothing soft about kavinsky. he’d have loved to be able to say yes. if he was on his own, he’d say yes. but kavinsky’s parties aren’t for him anymore, now he’d cleaned up his act. they’re not for aaron’s precarious sobriety, and they’re not for kevin’s secrets, when andrew knows who kavinsky supplies for these days. if the rumours are true.

a lot of pull is needed to clean up what joey did to his daddy dearest. the kind of pull that joey doesn’t have, but could buy, with his exy talent. he thumbs over the keyboard of his phone. it’s the kind of party nicky might have fun of. or be very worried about.

he clicks out of the message.

k texts him again and again over the next few days.

_you coming to fourth? _

_betcha i can be more fun than Columbia. _

_betcha you can’t race me. _

_you coming to fourth?_

but andrew’s got shit on his plate, such as attending his sessions with bee, keeping aaron sober, and managing kevin, who seems incapable of existing without a master, so he ignores the texts studiously, because he can’t afford not to.

joseph kavinsky is not for him anymore. that life is not for him, because he’s not on his own. he drams of the sleek lines of k’s car, and the pale column of his throat, and his mouth full of too many teeth. his meds make him irritable. he overfixates. he dreams of k’s little green pills, and the taste they left at the back of his throat, sickly sweet and cloying.

they spend the fourth in columbia. he watches kevin and nicky on the dancefloor with a sick feeling of premonition in the pits of his stomach. he doesn’t like where kevin lets his hands rest on nicky’s waist. it would be very unfortunate if he had to lose the use of them again for being inconsiderate.

he slams back shots and settles his stomach with the taste of roland when he goes on a smoke break. the hard bassline of the music shakes through him, and he feels it rattling his ribcage like a panic attack.

the fireworks would be starting right about now.

nicky drives on their way back. not a single one of them should have been driving. the ferrari’s engine makes a delightful noise that is undoubtedly sexy. it’s the best thing tilde minyard had ever done in her entire pathetic life. he _knows _how k would have looked at him, if he’d arrived to his party in it, the naked hunger in his hollow eyes and the way he’d run his pale tongue over his vulgar mouth.

joseph kavinsky is nothing to him anymore. when they’d been in juvie, ripping at the seams along their scars and spilling venom into each other from the open wounds in the wreck of their respective personal tragedies related to the simple fact that they’d been born, it had all been a game to him. there was no winning, just kavinsky procuring forbidden items like cigarettes and lighters, and making himself available, offering the pallid canvas of his skin for bruising. andrew had known him to be dangerous. kavinsky hadn’t denied it.

_i killed them both, _kavinsky had mouthed breathless.

proko and his father. he dreamt of the bentley wrapping around the tree, and his own miraculous survival. he dreamt of ilya prokopenko’s blood and bits of skull on his hands. the premeditated murder, and the accident.

_it was all just one big accident. _

andrew does not like that word, but he likes the way kavinsky rests his corpse-like hands on the headboard, and doesn’t move. the way he lays back and lets it happen.

_it’s all you can do some nights,_ kavinsky says, blows menthol cigarette smoke into andrew’s lips, breathes into him, a reverse cpr maneuver, pulls his heart out from between his ribs, like a magic trick. the entirety of kavinsky is a magic trick. half the time with him, andrew thinks he’s either high, or dreaming.

in the morning, he has a slew of missed texts and calls, and his entire body feels like he’s been in a car wreck all over again, the phantom pain of his cracked ribs and shattered leg, and having to lose yet another mother because of a promise he made putting him in a fowl mood.

he ignores his phone, and he ignores the texts. there’s nothing kavinsky’s pack can say that would be of use of interest to him. he has no interest in talking to _forgeries. _

they’re in trouble when they get back to palmetto, though, and he can’t stop grinning as wymack drags him to his office. kevin looks like a lost kicked little puppy, staring between andrew and wymack and the sofas, until andrew fixes him with a look and tells him to “stay.”

kevin slumps back down and stares down at his hands, like they might disappear any minute now. it must be tragic to have to live life with only half a brain, andrew truly pities him. he slants a look at nicky’s affronted expression and shrugs and tries to approximate a sorrowful expression, but he’s not apologetic in the least, because he has no idea what he’s gotten in trouble for this time.

wymack sighs so very heavily, like he’s got the weight of the world across his broad shoulders.

he says “you should sit.”

andrw raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. if this is about his missing jack daniels, they can go in circles about it till the cows come home, he’s not confessing to anything. he crosses his arms across his chest, feels the reassuring weight of his knives, and waits.

wymack sighs again, drags a hand over his face.

“andrew we got a call today,” he says. he’s beating around the bush, doing the thing adults do, where they try to drag the bad news out like it makes a difference. andrew motions impatiently at him to just get to the damn point.

“someone named anna-mariа kavinska,” wymack says.

andrew stares at him blankly, the edges of his smile melting somewhat as his confusion bubbles up. “i literally have no idea who that is,” he says. it might be a former foster parent? or a social worker? they’d all started blurring together after a while. someone who wants a piece of the pie now that he’s famous. whatever.

“apparently you knew her son in juvie. joey?” wymack prompts.

andrew feels that megawatt smile he hates almost painfully stretch across his cheeks.   
  


“aw, can’t momma make bail for her baby?” he mocks. k’s family is _loaded. _unless dream daddy decided to pretend he’s a real person who can enforce real rules.

“andrew… i still think you should sit.”

the way he says it is heavy like a physical hand on andrew’s shoulder, pushing him down to one of the chairs. he sits, holding himself up rigidly. his phone is burning a weight in his pocket. he suddenly wishes he’d opened all those messages. he doesn’t like where this is going.

“mrs. kavinska wants to know if you can make it to her son’s funeral on wednesday, and if you could please say a couple of words about him.”

andrew knows intimately well how having all the air punched out of your chest feels like. it feels a lot like what wymack just said to him. the words slam into his sternum. he can’t smile when he can’t breathe.

“i must have misheard you, coach,” he says, that damn syrupy cheer dripping from his voice.

wymack just sighs again.

andrew jerks his hand towards the door.

“i’ll tell the team you won’t be at practice,” wymack says quietly. like hell. he’s not going to kavisnky’s damn funeral.

except, a little voice niggling at the back of his head, that sounds suspiciously like common sense, or nicky, pipes up, if you don’t go, how are you going to find out what happened to him?

he won’t. joseph kavinsky is no one to him anymore. they were teenagers, mistakes were made on all sides, and juvie was its own world. and out here, in the real world, they were nothing to each other. it had been years since they spoke, by the time kavinsky started texting him about his stupid party. he probably od-ed and choked on his own vomit. or he got wasted, and drove off a cliff – the kind of death he’d been speeding towards since before andrew met him, since that day daddy dearest – the real one, not the dream one – had blown ilya prokopenko’s brains clean out all over him, when he’d caught them doing things straight boys shouldn’t ever be caught doing with their best friend.

kavinsky had killed his father, and andrew had been jealous with such a venomous ugly sort of jealousy in his chest. no one would ever touch joseph kavinsky again. well. andrew had. andrew had touched him plenty, the expanse of fever-warm pale skin, the curve of his emaciated ribs. kavinsky had dragged him to the exy court and the promise of his mouth had made him stay.

“don’t feel obliged or whatever,” k had said. “i’d still blow you. you’re hot as hell and you’re dangerous. that’s like…all my standards being met.”

andrew had been thoroughly fascinated. he’d also had a lot less self-preservation instinct back then. and… he hadn’t promised aaron anything.

he ignores the foxes as he marches his way straight past them and outside in the blinding summer sun, pulling his cigarettes out of his back pocket with hands that should be shaking with shock but aren’t. he lighs up, and squints into the sun.

finally, he pulls his phone out and opens it.

_joey killed himself. _

something small and pathetic in his chest constricts at the thought of that.

joseph kavinsky had never wanted to be alive in the first place. joseph kavinsky ran the henrietta area with a tight fist, him and his boys. he had the cops in his pocket. he sold everything to everyone for a price. he kept his momma doped up and uninvolved, and his dream daddy docile and unsuspectable.

he’d dreamt up a perfect version of the boy his dead best friend had been.

mistakes had been made on all accounts.

andrew wonders what would have happened if he’d gone. if he’d seen it happen. he’s not sure how it happened. maybe he really did blow up his car. or he shot himself the way his daddy had shot proko, spraying blood and brains and bits of skull over the person standing nearest to him. maybe he walked into a lake with stones in his pockets, and never came out.

and his clueless, prozac-hazed mother wanted andrew to speak at the funeral.

the rest of his inbox is full of more of the same. some of these anonymous people identify themselves in their earlier messages.

some asshole named _swan_, a blake skovron, who’s daddy is someone-or-other in dc, a jiang, who had come to visit k in juvie once.

_proko’s in a coma, _jiang wrote. _he got caught in the blast radius. _

it still doesn’t explain why they’re all writing to andrew though, and he has to make his way through so many of their panicked messages – running around like headless chicken – like kevin without riko – before he gets to the bottom of it.

he’s the last person kavinsky texted, after _lynch. _andrew has no idea who lynch is, but the way the nameis typed oozes with bad juju. man, they must really hate _that _motherfucker.

he’s still not going to the funeral though. there’s nothing for him there.

wymack will tell mrs. kavinska to go back to her little pills and stop bothering kids she’d never met about a son who wasn’t around anymore.

he’ll still take the day off practice though. he plans to spend it on the roof with that bottle of jack, which is _exactly _the way k would have wanted to be remembered by.

he finishes his cigarette, stomps it out with his foot, and goes back inside.

he dresses in black, so it’s not like anyone can tell he’s in mourning. when kevin tries to question him, he can barely bite back saying something he can’t unsay, that will make bee frown at him.

for all that, on the whole, he cannot be assed with therapy, he doesn’t want bee to frown at him.

_i’m cursed to be forever weird around adults with authority over me, _he’d told her with a brilliant smile on their first meeting.

_oh?_ she’d seemed thoroughly unimpressed by him, but he was determined to crack her. _how so?_

_oh, trust me lady. i will make it weird. _

so far no luck – she was almost weirder than him.

he gets well and truly daytime sloshed on wednesday. absolutely fucking plastered. he lays on the roof, and lets the sun seep into his scarred skin, and remembers kavinsky’s long fingers with their scarred knuckles, and his cyrillic tattoos, and the memory shakes him so hard his teeth rattle, when he thinks about them, in their respective beds in juvie, in a room so small that if they reached out at the same time, their hands would meet in the exact middle.

he doesn’t cry, because he can’t, and he’s not sad, because he can’t be. kavinsky wasn’t that important. if it hadn’t been him, andrew would have experimented with some other unclassically handsome boy with a violent heart, and would have discovered his fledgling sexuality in the arms of some other walking human disaster. it’s not like kavinsky was his first love.

kavinsky hadn’t really been his first anything.

he longs for thursday, and going back to business as usual.

kevin drags him out of bed completely ruthless about his splitting headache, apparently having determined for himself that whatever he and wymack talked about only gave him a free pass for the one day.

andrew caffeinates while kevin takes his sweet time in the bathroom, so they can all go for a run at ass o’clock before morning practice. he wishes kevin nothing but mild salsa in his mexican food for the rest of his life.

they step out into the parking lot at the tower, and andrew can admit that there is some modicum of reason in running before it gets hotter than satan’s asshole outside. he’s just about to turn around and say so to kevin, when he sees kevin’s face, and it instantly puts him on alert. he slips a knife discreetly into his hand and scans the parking lot to determine what kevin’s perceived as a threat to his safety, which, frankly, can be anything these days. riko moriyama is a jealous and possessive little bastard after all, and it’s been a while since christmas. by kevin’s own estimate, he should be recovered enough from tetsuji’s punishment to start retaliating.

kevin’s stricken face transforms quickly – andrew can feel his shutters going down. he looks arrogant and insufferable as usual, and all his fear is wiped out, by the time andrew finally makes eye contact with the black clad group smoking next to an undeniably sexy RX-7.

there’s a tall, delicate-looking boy with pale hair and gauged ears leaning a skinny hip against the car, model-like, and black boy with a shaved head and in true asshole fashion, a signet ring, and finally, a sour-faced chinese boy who looks absolutely ready to throw down. that’s fair enough, so is andrew.

they’re all dressed in nice trousers and blazers, and stark white collared shirt, like a bunch of missionaries. or like private school kids.

kevin’s already started moving towards them, almost on autopilot, so andrew follows.

“riko getting highschoolers to do his dirty work now?” he whispers, grinning.

“don’t smile. they’re kavinsky’s dogs, and they’ll fuck you up. riko’s had them marked for court for ages.”

huh. well, that’s interesting. andrew flicks another glance at the group. they seem relatively calm and inoffensive on the whole.

“oi, minyard,” the pale tall one calls out. he could be an extra in lord of the rings. andrew dubs him _legolas _in his head.

“that’s my name,” andrew says brightly.

“andrew, right? not the other one?” well, kudos for you, Legolas, andrew thinks. most people don’t really think to check first, before they throw down. if they’re planning on throwing down at all.

“aw, that’s making me feel real bad,” he says in his best aw, shucks voice. “you know my name, but i have no fucking clue who you are. or what business you have with me.”

“i’m swan,” legolas says, motioning to himself with one pretty elegant arm. clearly they’ve appointed him as speaker. “that’s jiang,” the guy who looks ready to throw down nods, jus tbarely, “and that’s skov.” the asshole with the signet ring raises his hand in a lazy salute.

“‘sup, day?” jiang asks, and takes a drag from his cigarette. kevin stares him down. good to know he has some standards, and isn’t about to be trampled over by some highschool seniors. for a moment andrew had been worried that his waning respect for kevin would have to take even more of a nosedive.

“you weren’t at the funeral, minyard,” says skov, his dark eyes boring holes into andrew.

“what funeral?” kevin snaps, like andrew’s the one who killed a man.

“didn’t feel appropriate for me to go,” andrew says breezily. “i hadn’t spoken to your boy k in years. the real question is, what business is it of yours?”

beside him, kevin breathes in sharply, and andrew can feel him tensing and taking a step back.

“you know kavinsky?” he demands in another hiss whisper. andrew elbows him in the ribs, hard.

“that’s what we’d like to know too, asshole,” jiang says. “you’re the last person he texted, before he –“

his voice cuts off abruptly. aw. poor little hardass, he’s still making it through the anger stage.

“like i said. hadn’t spoken to him in years,” andrew cays curtly. “have a good day, gentlemen. come along kevin, we have things to do and places to be.”

“the hell you do,” skov snaps. “kavinsky _killed _himself, you insensitive asshole. we all watched him go down. and for some reason, you’re the last person he texts and calls before that, and you can’t even be assed to respond to him, and his mom calls you but you can’t be bothered to show to the funeral? what the fuck is _wrong _with you?”

kevin starts wringing his hands, abandoning all pretense of self-control.

“clearly i’m just a psychopath,” andrew intones. he’s getting tired of this conversation. he wants to get away from the children and their raw, fresh grief. you’d think they’ve never seen anyone die before, but judging by kevin’s reaction to them, they probably have.

for a moment, the three of them look completely striken. legolas’ pretty blue eyes widen, just a fraction, before he scoffs, and his pale bloodless lips pull into a sneer.

“whatever,” he says, and makes an annoyed gesture with his hand. “clearly one thing never changed, and it’s k’s taste in men. this one’s more of an asshole than _lynch._”

jiang’s gotten control of himself, and now looks pissed off and sour again.

“fucking riko turned up to the funeral,” he sneers. the implication is clear- andrew didn’t, ergo he’s worse than riko. but in andrew’s own defense, he never broke kevin’s hand, though he feels the temptation to break his face when he talks nearly on the daily. he deserves some kind of award for his iron-clad self-control.

kevin makes a terrible wounded noise behind him. whatever drama between the misfits and riko’s little court he’s walked in on, he wants out.

“we were roomies in juvie, but it’s not like we stayed up all night braiding each other’s hair and talking about _boys,”_ he says. he is furious. he doesn’t have to explain himself to these people, but the sooner they leave, the better. “pardon my dry eyes. it’s all terribly sad that he killed himself and all that, but the last time we spoke, we were s_till _in juvie, and i haven’t the earthliest idea why he started texting me out of the blue. like i said, _good day._”

he grabs kevin by the elbow, and practically drags him away.

“wanna know what his last words were?” skov asks. if he’s so determined to relive his traumatic memory, andrew won’t be the one to stop him, but he also doesn’t have to be here for it.

“the world is a nightmare,” jiang says quietly. it would be worse if he’d shouted it across the car park, but andrew’s still close enough to hear it. it sounds like something k would say.

he keeps walking, and half-dragging kevin along.

he raises a hand to kevin’s face, and waves at him. “don’t,” he warns, before kevin can say something that will _definitely _make andrew punch him.

he doesn’t want to hear it. joseph kavinsky killed himself, and his friends had to watch it happen, at a party andrew didn’t go to. worse things have happened. that k was important for riko to make an appearance at his funeral, is frankly none of andrew’s business.

all the same, the evening finds him drinking and smoking on the roof, staring at the concrete below. the drop would be… magnificent. he’d burst open, and all the ugly things festering inside him would spill out. thinking thoughts like that is why he has to take pills and see bee, he knows. thinking thoughts like that is why k burned up.

someone had posted a video of the party on facebook. and then the fireworks had gone wrong, k had looked into the fire, smiling big and elated.

_the world is a nightmare. _

andrew watched his talented mouth shape the words on loop. over and over and over.

then he reported the video for violating the terms and service. it’s not like he could ever forget it. he closes his eyes, takes a swig of the bottle, and raises it to the empty sky, and the expanse of concrete.

k hadn’t been his first love, or his first anything. all the same, andrew toasts silently to him.

**Author's Note:**

> haters back off


End file.
